Following her phenomenally successful single Grace, the London-based breakthrough artist and producer Raelle is here with a gleaming fusion of jazz and orchestral RnB, Cruel Nostalgia.
After losing a close friend to suicide at the start of the year, Raelle was locked in a spiral of grief, where nostalgia was the only comfort and reprieve. Anyone who has ever suffered loss will know how impossible it is to envision anything but the wrenching depression that alienates you from everyone else that carries on in their on-kilter world.
Without the context, Cruel Nostalgia is a stunning score of soul, complete with cinematic flourishes which embrace the fleeting beauty of the bitter world through the live orchestral arrangements and acid-style percussion. In context, it radiates even more beguile by resonating as a sonic redemption story and definitive proof that even if you have to look to the innocence of youth to feel joy, it is still there for the taking.
Cruel Nostalgia will be available to stream from December 2nd. Check out the sensuous single via SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast